1. Meaning. Psychoanalysis is sometimes used as a general term, to describe mainly psychological treatments of neuroses, neurosthenic faults of character and psychosomatic illnesses, i. e., more or less in the sense of “psychotherapy”. Strictly speaking, psychoanalysis is a method of investigating psychology, implying 1) a number of experimentally verifiable findings, 2) a theory of psychology and 3) a philosophical anthropology.

In 1881, a Viennese neurologist, Dr J. Breuer, found that many symptoms of hysteria could be attached to experiences, “traumas”…